Improving students’ Arabic at Northwestern University in Qatar

June 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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By D. D. GUTTENPLAN on New York Times, June 11 – 

At Northwestern University in Qatar the administration recently came up against a surprising problem: How to improve students’ Arabic.

The overseas campus of the renowned university in Evanston, Illinois, attracts students from 30 countries for its programs in communications and journalism, popular majors in the hometown of Al Jazeera, the satellite broadcasting network. Although courses are given in English, about 60 percent of students speak some form of Arabic. “But most of them don’t speak Arabic well enough to appear on Al Jazeera,” said Everette E. Dennis, the school’s dean.

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Book Review[s] – International Media Communication in a Global Age & Negotiating in the Press

May 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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International Media Communication in a Global Age. Guy J. Golan, Thomas J. Johnson, and Wayne Wanta, eds. New York and London: Routledge, 2010. 480 pp.

Negotiating in the Press: American Journalism and Diplomacy, 1918-1919. Joseph R. Hayden. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2010. 320 pp.

These texts present two opposite but equally important foci of research in the growing field of international communication—the edited collection takes a  macro view, tackling news flow theories, international journalism, and strategic communication in a globalized world, while the monograph delves in depth on a very narrow episode, the peace negotiations after World War I. Both introduce fruitful research avenues about concerns as different as the role of the news media in diplomacy and strategies for global branding. While two of the three parts of Golan, Johnson, and Wanta’s volume are valuable enough that the book could be used as textbook in an introductory class on international communication, Hayden’s work is most helpful as a spur to further research on the important issues it raises.

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Book Review: Patronizing the Public: American Philanthropy’s Transformation of Culture, Communication, and the Humanities

September 9, 2010 By Leave a Comment
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Patronizing the Public: American Philanthropy’s Transformation of Culture, Communication, and the Humanities. Buxton, William J. (ed.) (2009). Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. pp. 350.

Communication scholars increasingly are interested in philanthropies and philanthropic activities. Scholar-ship, courses, and new programs are devoted to the study of philanthropies. Typically, the focus is on how the study of communication can contribute to philanthropies and philanthropic activities. The University of Northern Iowa, for instance, offers an M.A. degree in philanthropic development, and the Department of Communication Studies offers courses in support of this program. The courses focus on how an understanding of communication can assist in the design of philanthropic campaigns and how communication theory can inform the choices philanthropies make. [Read more...]

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